Compressed Data; Company Keeps Sales Mantra but Drops the Dalai Lama

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: August 25, 2003

The Dalai Lama has preached nonviolence, urged cooperation between China and Tibet and expressed views on countless global issues. But for the record, he has taken no position -- pro or con -- on customer management software.

Some people might have received a different impression if they happened to unroll a promotional poster that was recently published by Salesforce.com, a company that helps businesses use the Internet to manage their customer data and interactions.

The poster invited journalists and employees to a San Francisco appearance of ''His Holiness the Dalai Lama,'' an event for which Salesforce.com had bought 500 tickets. The poster included a giant photograph of the spiritual leader, who is depicted praying beneath a Salesforce.com advertising slogan. ''There is no software on the path to enlightenment,'' the poster says.

As the tagline suggests, Salesforce.com, which is based in San Francisco, has sought to differentiate its Internet-based service from competitors that sell customer-management software for companies to install and run from their computer networks.

But at least a few people apparently concluded that the use of the Dalai Lama's image had made a caricature of a widely respected spiritual leader.

After receiving several complaints, Salesforce.com began distributing a different poster, without the Dalai Lama's picture and with no reference to enlightenment.

''Sometimes these things happen when you're an aggressive marketer like us,'' the chief executive of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff, said. The original poster, he said, was intended to be ''lighthearted.''

Mr. Benioff said he had also apologized to the Dalai Lama's organization and to ''anyone who might have been offended.'' The company has many relationships with the Tibetan community because Salesforce.com has made donations to several Tibetan causes, Mr. Benioff said, including the provision of e-mail access to 32 Tibetan refugee settlements in Bhutan, India and Nepal.

Also, as noted on its poster, Salesforce.com has given $100,000 to the American Himalayan Foundation and the Tibet Fund in recognition of the company attaining 100,000 users who have been ''freed from the boundaries of software.''

Mr. Benioff said the company had received permission to use the Dalai Lama's likeness. And a company spokeswoman, Jane Hynes, said that even though the poster was pulled, she did not think it was inappropriate to suggest a link between Salesforce.com and the Dalai Lama.

The company has a mantra? As in meditation? ''No,'' Ms. Hynes said, not an actual mantra. ''It's more of a customer concept built on the philosophy that software as you know it today will not be in existence -- everything moving to the online format,'' she said. ''I guess it's just one of those big thoughts.'' MATT RICHTEL

Photo: Salesforce.com removed an image of the Dalai Lama from a poster after it got complaints.